from the reports-have-been-greatly-idiotic dept

Last week, there were two widely reported "deaths" on the internet: Pepe The Frog and the MP3 audio codec. Most people seemed to understand what was meant by the former headline -- that you cannot in fact kill a meme, no matter how distasteful its use, and the death of Pepe in an official cartoon strip was a symbolic disavowal of the character by its creator. But on the MP3 issue people seem a bit more confused.

Here's what happened: in late April (not sure why there was such a big delay in the explosion of blog posts) Fraunhofer IIS, the research company that holds the patents on MP3 encoders and decoders, announced that it had terminated the licensing program for those patents, for the stated reason that the format has been surpassed by alternatives like AAC (which is also patented and licensed by Fraunhofer). For some reason, a whole lot of media outlets have accepted this at face value and reported that the format is now officially on its way out. "The MP3 is Dead" headlines abound, with only a small few bothering to add qualifiers like "according to its creators" or the classic rejoinder "long live the MP3":

Most of the articles buried some attempt to call the move "symbolic" or clarify that the files would still exist towards the end of their coverage, after much eulogizing, but almost none took the time to understand anything about the patent situation, or expose Fraunhofer's huge lie of omission in its announcement.

Because here's what really happened: the last of the patents related to the MP3 format expired (or will very soon -- more on that later), so Fraunhofer has nothing left to license. The termination of the licensing program was not a choice, nor was it suddenly motivated by the ascendence of another format that has itself been around for 20 years. Most importantly, despite what many people have reported, this does not mean the death of the MP3. Of course, Fraunhofer's statement didn't contradict any of these things, it just omitted them all and left people with the implication that this move ensured the decline and eventual death of the format -- when in fact it likely means the exact opposite.

Prior to this, developers wishing to include MP3 functionality in their software needed a license to do so. If you use Linux, or open source audio tools like the excellent Audacity, you already know this: open-source software doesn't ship with MP3 encoding and decoding capabilities built in, but requires you to separately download and install the codec so as not to pollute the FOSS package with proprietary, patented code. That's no longer the case, and indeed Red Hat has already announced that Fedora will now ship with MP3 capabilities built in (hat tip there to one of the few blogs that is reporting this story properly). Expect Audacity and countless other FOSS apps to follow suit soon. As for non-open-source software, it's one less patent number on the long lists of licenses that live on loading splash screens and About dialogues, and a little bit of saved cost. All around, it's the removal of a barrier to building apps and tools that work with this ubiquitous audio format.

Does that sound like death to you?

So does Fraunhofer's announcement actually mean anything? Well, a little bit: as noted, it actually hasn't been 100% clear when all the patents would expire, due to the size and complexity of the patent thicket in the overall MPEG ecosystem. It was generally agreed that all patents covering MP3s would expire this year, and many had pegged the date as the end of April, but this was much harder to confirm. Fraunhofer's announcement does not offer any specific information to make this determination easier (since it doesn't admit that this has anything to do with patent expiry at all), but developers like Red Hat are taking it as a sign that the patents are officially expired and the format is free to use.

While it's frustrating that Fraunhofer issued such a misleading statement, it's even more frustrating that so much of the media uncritically parroted it. Some also decided to throw in some scattershot links to various questionable studies claiming MP3 compression has negative effects like stripping out the "emotion" from music (that particular study was conducted on just 20 college students, and used MP3s encoded at a bit-rate well below the modern norm for music distribution) to bolster the idea that MP3 compression must be replaced by the still-patented AAC codec. I'm sure Fraunhofer was grateful.

So, no: the MP3 is not dead. Its creators have not killed it. Like Pepe the Frog, it's alive and well and probably isn't going anywhere for a long time -- except in this case we can actually be happy about that fact.

from the well-look-at-that dept

We already wrote about the recent filing in the EMI v. MP3Tunes case, in which Michael Robertson shows that (contrary to EMI's statements to the court) EMI regularly promoted its music by giving out free MP3s. However, I wanted to do a separate post looking at one specific email highlighted in the filing. It shows an email from 2008 from Stephen Gullberg, an employee of EMI Publishing, talking about marketing plans involving giving away free MP3 downloads. I've bolded the parts that struck me as particularly interesting. Gullberg is emailing with a counterpart at EMI:

Free Promotional MP3 of one song to the public for free download
from Peter Moréns album (as do most indie labels). They would
offer "Social Competence" for free download on
touchandgorecords.com, Peter and Touch and Go's Myspace
pages, plus encourage as many third party online zines, podcasts,
blogs, major web portals to host the MP3 for free download on
their site. We are being told that historically the track which is
offered for free like this is usually still the top selling track in
digital retail. They would like to offer this promotional MP3
download for nine months. After that initially period the
promotional partners will replace the MP3 download with a stream
for the duration of the license of the album including offering a
stream of the song on their website and on their Myspace page and
Peter's Myspace page, or until they decide to ask these partners to
remove the stream.

The label has given us a further explanation of why they pursue this strategy. One promotional MP3 per album is the
best way they can virally promote the album which will increase sales and thus revenue on the compositional side as
well as the master recording side. This promotional technique has proven to be so effective, that virtually every free
track they have issued from an album has maintained itself as the top selling track from the album. It also enables
them to offer something from the album to the myriad of sites, blogs, podcasts out there that would be tempted to
give away unauthorized materials, perhaps the entire album, if they do not have the option to feature a track that
they offer to them. This control mechanism is vital to their methods of slowing piracy of albums.

And yet, all this time, the RIAA keeps insisting that free music is a problem? Even as employees at the labels knew years ago that free was "so effective" as a promotional technique that it helped sell the same track much more.

from the seems-a-bit-excessive dept

It's no secret that the Iranian government has a bit of an uncomfortable relationship with the internet. First of all, it's trying to build its own internet, at which point it supposedly would like to block out that "other" internet completely. It's also pretty aggressive in censoring various sites it doesn't like. Over the past few days, it's apparently gone a step further. While there were plenty of reports about it blocking YouTube, someone who prefers to remain anonymous sent over this story, saying that Iran's Filtering Committee (IFC) has started blocking all kinds of audio-visual files, based on filetype:

Then, on October 4, 2012, the IFC began preventing files hosted on servers outside Iran from entering the country by blocking specific file extensions. At the time of writing, this policy applies to all MP3, MP4, AVI and SWF files. This kind of filtering was used after the controversial presidential elections of 2009, amidst harsh crackdowns on freedom of information, and coincides with Iran's current economic crisis and the ensuing protests.

Apparently, those blocks do not apply to those files hosted within the country -- just those from foreign sites. Still, that's a pretty extreme move: blocking all of those files takes away a significant part of the audio-visual part of the web. The article highlights a number of Iranians complaining on Twitter about how these blocks are having a severe negative impact on what they do. Still, it's yet another warning for what happens when a government can aggressively filter the internet in extreme ways.

from the fighting-the-wrong-fight dept

We've discussed in the past how ridiculous it is to claim that there's a fight between "Hollywood and Silicon Valley." After all, the tech industry keeps creating the tools for Hollywood to succeed and broaden its market... and every time they do so, Hollywood responds by attacking those providing the tools. Every innovation that created a vast new market from which to profit from has been attacked. The gramophone. Radio. TV. Cable TV. The VCR. The MP3 player. YouTube. The DVR. In the end, all of these created great new opportunities, but were attacked. As we've said, it's a very strange war where one side (tech) is building all the weapons for the other side... only to see them point those new weapons at their own feet.

Of course, it's actually even worse than that. Because, not only does Hollywood point these new weapons at their own feet... they then try to sue and blame the tech industry for creating these same weapons. It's a pretty hostile environment.

And this is a massive problem for Hollywood. Because, throughout history, it has been shown that the only solution that actually helps solve the "issue" of "piracy" is the creation of new and useful legitimate services. And the entertainment industry is doing its best to scare everyone off from doing that by attacking each of those new services as it comes about. Entrepreneur Tyler Crowley has a great analogy explaining how the entertainment industry is driving the very innovators it needs help from away. He talks about how entrepreneurs look at markets as "islands of opportunity." He lists out a few, such as the Facebook island and the Apple island.

For tech folks, from the 35,000' view, there are islands of opportunity. There's Apple Island, Facebook Island, Microsoft Island, among many others and yes there's Music Biz Island. Now, we as tech folks have many friends who have sailed to Apple Island and we know that it's $99/year to doc your boat and if you build anything Apple Island will tax you at 30%. Many of our friends are partying their asses off on Apple Island while making millions (and in some recent cases billions) and that sure sounds like a nice place to build a business.

He talks about a few other of these "islands of opportunity" (and does a nice job breaking them down). But then he gets to the "music biz island" (which I'd argue is actually the "legacy entertainment biz island") and notes the hostile reception:

Now, we also know of Music Biz Island which is where the natives start firing cannons as you approach, and if not stuck at sea, one must negotiate with the chiefs for 9 months before given permission to dock. Those who do go ashore are slowly eaten alive by the native cannibals. As a result, all the tugboats and lighthouses (investors, advisors) warn to stay far away from Music Biz Island, as nobody has ever gotten off alive. If that wasn't bad enough, while Apple and Facebook Island are built with sea walls to protect from the rising oceans, Music Biz Island is already 5 ft under and the educated locals are fleeing for Topspin Island.

In other words, the good entrepreneurs, who actually can help the entertainment industry (some of whom tried in the past) are actively pushed away from helping. And then the entertainment industry whines that no one wants to help them. Perhaps they should look at being just a bit more welcoming...

On a side note: Crowley's writeup was actually in response to a dinner gathering at some super super swank LA eatery that tried to bring together the heads of the major labels with some LA entrepreneurs. That's actually encouraging, though, again, meeting in backrooms is still missing the point. Why is it so hard for the industry to have a discussion in public?

from the basic-economics dept

Rob Reid, who recently got a ton of well deserved attention for his hilarious TED talk on copyright math, has a WSJ op-ed piece, in which he tries to explain why there's so little ebook infringement, compared to music infringement. The crux of his argument? Even though the big publishers aren't really great about this stuff, rather than fight the technology, they were actually quick to embrace the technology and make authorized works available for purchase. Contrast that to the music industry, which sued every advancement in technology, including the first MP3 player, and didn't actually license an MP3 download store until many, many years after MP3 players were widely available.

Compare this to the situation in books. Although it had some small-time forerunners, the Kindle, like the Rio MP3 player, brought portability to a mass market. But the Kindle launched with licenses rather than lawsuits from the key rights-holders in its domain, and offered more than 90% of the day's best sellers when it shipped.

This meant that consumers discovered digital books through a licensed experience that delighted them. Exciting hardware, a critical mass of titles and Amazon's retail sensibilities were all integrated into a single elegant package that piracy has never matched.

Of course, piracy emerged anyway. Countless unlicensed e-books can be found online, and millions of people use them. But sales figures suggest that relatively few of these downloads represent foregone purchases. Most Kindle, iPad and Nook owners seem to view piracy as a low-rent and time-consuming experience compared with the sanctioned alternatives. They probably wouldn't if the publishers had kicked things off with a five-year content boycott.

This highlights a key point that many of us have been trying to make for a long, long time. The "answer" to the "piracy question" is not greater enforcement or more draconian laws, as the entertainment industry keeps telling us, but rather more legitimate services that can provide good value to consumers. The music industry failed at that for so long, that it really helped drive the culture of infringing music.

For years, we've pointed out that of course you can compete with free. But what Rob's article is highlighting is even more fundamental. Not only can you compete with free, you must compete with free or you're going to lose out. If you don't offer a legitimate alternative, people will flock to the illegitimate ones. Yes, some people will always infringe, but over and over again we see how legitimate services pull people away from file sharing and towards paying -- if they provide enough value at a reasonable price.

Now, I know that some will quibble with one other major difference between books and music that Rob sort of leaps over in his piece: it was much easier to create digital music than ebooks. You could just take CDs and drop it into your computer and there you go. There really wasn't a simple equivalent for books. Sure, lots of people have scanners, but that's a laborious process. Still, I'm not convinced that was really as big a deal as I'm sure some will make of it. That's because once a single copy of a book is digitized, it's very quickly available all over the place. And there were plenty of people working to digitize books long before the Kindle came along. It might have been a limiting factor, but certainly not a complete hindrance to ebook infringement.

Either way, the key takeaway can hardly be challenged: the way to deal with piracy is to offer good legitimate services, and preferably more than just one, so they can compete on adding value. Unfortunately, many in the industry like to just dip their toes in the water with a few services -- and as soon as they become successful, seek to raise prices. That's no way to encourage a long term market success.

from the well,-there's-that dept

For quite a while now, we've been hearing how many in the recording industry don't like selling pure music digital files, because they leave out the rest of what people like to get with an album: the booklet, images, lyrics, etc. Lately there have been a few different attempts (with a whole bunch more on the way) to add that sort of information to digital music files. Not so long ago Apple introduced its iTunes LP which hasn't exactly taken the world by storm yet. Now there's another competitor in the space, called MusicDNA, which includes all that additional content. It's main differentiator, though, is that the content can be regularly updated -- but only if you have the official copy, rather than an unauthorized one. I certainly understand the thinking here (it's an attempt to create a "freemium" type situation which encourages people to buy the version with all that other (updating) content. But I do wonder if the updating will freak some users out -- knowing that they want to buy something that isn't going to change over time in any way. I like the basic idea that content could be added to (which certainly could be a reason to buy) so long as old content can't be tinkered with/deleted (it's not clear in either article here). Another article suggests that the updated content would be for things like concert listings or Twitter feeds, which actually makes sense. Though, seeing all that, I wonder if this file format actually competes with the new trend for musicians to put out iPhone apps that sound like they basically do the same thing as this new MusicDNA format does.

from the that's-gotta-lose-some-quality dept

There's a report going around about some researchers who created a music file that's apparently 1,000 times smaller than MP3s. However, what's really interesting is how it's done. Rather than actually record the sound, it's designed to recreate the sound itself. As the article notes, it's more like the way a player piano plays music from a roll of punched paper than a recording of the original piano. Of course, that's got to make you wonder about the quality, and whether it comes out sounding mechanical, losing the actual nuances of how the music was played -- but the researchers insist their system captures exactly how the music was played as well. Don't expect to hear much out of this research for a while, though. Right now, the system is rather limited. It can only work with certain types of music (clarinet music from the sound of it), because they had to program in the specifics of how a clarinet is played (such as fingering, breath pressure, and lip pressure). Considering that they would then need to do that with every single instrument, somehow this doesn't seem likely to be in practical use any time soon.

from the it's-not-about-audio-quality dept

Since when is Lou Reed an audiophile? Down at SXSW Reed gave a talk where he complained about the sound quality of MP3 technology and the fact that people didn't realize how awful they sounded. This is a complaint made by quite a few other people as well, who seem to ignore the fact that for most people and most music, MP3 technology is perfectly good enough, and the convenience of being able to carry around more, is a lot more important than a barely (if at all) noticeable change in audio quality. In the meantime, has Lou Reed listened to any of his early Velvet Underground recordings? I don't recall "audio quality" being one of the key characteristics of those songs...

from the don't-mp3-me,-bro dept

Engadget and Gizmodo are shoveling post after post on this week's CES (aren't they supposed to help us cut through all the noise, rather than adding to it?) and it occurred to me that it makes almost no sense for anyone to launch new consumer electronics products this week. There's no way to stand out against the zillion other product releases. Even if you can get a post on one of the gadget blogs, you're probably off of the front page in 30 seconds or so. However, one way to stand out and get some attention is to come up with what may be the most ridiculous combination of gadgets out there: a taser holster that includes a 1GB mp3 player. I'm not quite sure what this is saying? Are police officers supposed to be enjoying their tunes as they tase someone into submission? And I'm not even going to touch on the fact that the latest Taser devices are now available in stylish leopard print skins. There's been a ton of controversy over just how dangerous taser devices really are... and their response is to offer an MP3 player and more stylish devices? Seems like a bit of a disconnect.